


merry-go-round

by antagonists



Category: Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: Gen, Manga Spoilers, Psychological Horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-30
Updated: 2014-08-30
Packaged: 2018-02-15 10:19:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2225406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/antagonists/pseuds/antagonists
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Madness he can give—madness, Kaneki finds, is all that he has.</p><p>(Or, introspect on a tragedy's protagonist through the web of nightmares).</p>
            </blockquote>





	merry-go-round

**Author's Note:**

> unbeta'd for now.  
> this is pretty graphic, ngl. turn back now if you're not comfortable with any of that.  
> modeled after how unsettling some of my own nightmares are, after all.  
> also, trying out new style, so gomen for the fail.

#

 

A healthy, flowering sprig burns.

 

There is something in the way that its newly grown petals wilt in the heat, a mesmerizing quality to the dim amber glow of its decaying body. The embers rise, up to the skies; the ashes fall, gathered around the charcoal corpse. As the fire fades away, melting into the light of dawn, the structure crumbles, collapses upon itself into a different, more brittle formation. There are no tears, for the sprig is too dry. All the moisture has been stolen by the flames. Instead, it drags split fingers in the hard ground.

 

As it gouges black marks into the world, the sprig, also, slowly starts to disappear. The greedy wind picks at the remaining, bitter flesh.

 

#

 

Kaneki dreams.

 

He is drinking coffee with Rize, enjoying her sweet smile, the flutter of her long eyelashes. He can’t seem to stop staring, stop staring at the way her lips move, how her hair spills down her neck and back like blood. Her fingers wrap delicately around bound fiber, the crisp leaf of a page, nail tracing over the ebony ink that seems not to form words, but run endlessly down, like a trickle of black. It drips onto Rize, but she does not notice. She does not notice the black that stains her clothing, the black that gnaws at her alabaster skin.

 

The book, he wants to say, but his lips do not move. He is still staring at her, feeling the irritating upwards tug of his lips as he smiles. Why does he smile? The black, he tries to whisper, it’s eating you, Rize, please stop it. She reads on, sipping delicately at her cup of coffee. The liquid looks to be the color of pitch. Slowly, slowly, the cup fills, flooding the table with ink that leaves Kaneki’s skin sticky and uncomfortably warm.

 

It’s good, Rize grins, handing the book over to Kaneki. His body moves of its own accord, and his fingers clasp the paper. The edges cut into his skin, like knives. The pain, though, is not intrusive; it leaves a pleasant tingle in the back of his mind. Something inside of him wants to curl his fingers deeper into the ink that pours out of the pages, but the paper blades hit bone, and Rize is grasping his wrist.

 

With paper and words, she mouths against his ear. You cut yourself open for me with paper and words, Kaneki. Such a sweet boy, aren’t you?

 

The black has flooded the place. He is standing on his toes to keep from going under, and Rize’s lips are still at his jaw. Kaneki takes several more deep breaths, and then the ink rises above his eyes. He cannot see. All he can feel is the warmth of Rize pushing against him, pulling him down, deeper and deeper. Good, she murmurs, and her voice climbs into his ear, sits cozily in the recesses of his mind. Come, fall with me, become one with me. Give yourself to me.

 

He shuts his eyes, leans his head back, and sinks.

 

#

 

Hide’s eyes, when they’re frozen open in agony, are strangely beautiful.  That is what Kaneki thinks as he crouches by his cold friend, gazing down at those pale lips, touching brittle hair with his blood-caked fingertips.

 

Let’s go, he says quietly, and Hide sits up, head lolling. His voice is nothing more than a raspy hiss, but Kaneki loves listening to it all the same. They walk down the paper streets with their paper houses. Sometimes, Hide will stumble forward and step too hard on the road. It will tear, and when Kaneki looks down into the hole, he sees shifting sands, glinting gold and bronze in the perpetual midday sun. He holds his hand out to Hide, and pulls him up, careful so that Hide’s arm will not rip off. His friend is still delicate, so delicate, almost like the paper city they amble through now.

 

His brains are leaking out of his head. Kaneki cups his hands, and scoops them back into Hide’s torn head.

 

You have to be more careful, he shakes his head, and shoves a thin finger into Hide’s ear, stoppering the hole so that more thoughts won’t come tumbling out of his colleague. Or else all your brains are going to fall out. You have to be the one to solve the puzzle. As if he understands what is being said to him, Hide nods jerkily, unblinkingly. His lips have been pinned into an eerie, comforting smile.

 

That’s too bad, Hide mutters when the paper city begins to flood with water. The buildings crumble, sagging like heavy rain clouds, and the streets cave in to reveal a torrent of glittering sand. Poor paper village. Poor, poor houses, crumbling when the waves come and drowning in the pretty sand.

 

He takes a tentative step towards the rising waters and churning sand, as if expecting Kaneki to follow. His eyes are wide and bright, smile made of plastic and broken dreams. And unable to resist, Kaneki obeys the silent wish, following Hide into the sand that is quick to latch onto his ankles, the gravity that refuses to let him go anywhere but down. Again the darkness swallows his sight, and he reaches out blindly for Hide’s dead touch.

 

I miss you, Hide grumbles lowly, and Kaneki nods. Hide falls into his arms as a corpse, and when Kaneki emerges into a white, white space, the skeleton clinging to his body blends in very well with the ivory background. It is like Hide is not there at all.

 

#

 

There are roses growing from inside Kaneki’s skull. The top of his head is nonexistent, the flesh for his head does not seem to be there either, and he reaches up to feel for the velvety red petals, prick his fingers on the spiny thorns. His fingers, too, when he looks at them, are gleaming bones framed by straining tendon and muscle. He chews at some of the flowers that he picks from his own head. When he digests the satiny, gross meal, his skin starts to grow. It begins as small scraps, but as he devours more of the red copse fresh from his own thoughts, the flesh fills out, covers his entire body in smoothness.

 

A big man is keeled over by the sidewalk. There is a broken staff, one splintered half on the ground, the other buried deep inside his gut. Kaneki surveys the scene, lets the rain fill his head. He can hear the roses growing, digging their roots deeper into his empty skull. Once more, he pinches at the flowers, and plucks. The crimson petal melts in his hand, spilling rivulets over his fingers and arm. He grabs at the thorny stems and pulls. Several of the roses are uprooted, and he hears the exhilarating sound of his mind being torn apart.

 

His body pulses his hunger and desire. Bloody tentacles thrash about, erupting from his back. They have a mind of their own, demanding for more, more, more.

 

For what, he seeks to ask. What more could you possibly want from me?

 

Everything, they groan, and pierce through the body of a giant raven. Its wings are limp by its body, and black feathers fall onto the wet ground, stain it with shadows and pain and deep regret. He grabs at some of the fallen feathers, not caring when the tips stab through his hand, and stuffs them into his head, where the roses continue to fester. When Kaneki raises his head to catch a glimpse of his victim’s beady eyes, the raven opens its beak, leans down, and swallows him whole.

 

#

 

A constant whispering itches the inside of Kaneki’s ear. Sometimes he will listen to it, sometimes he will turn his head away only to realize that it is already inside of him. The voice seems to harmonize with Rize’s, and he will often scream to drown out the noises of their obscene conversations. It is a cursed soundtrack set to loop, beginning with him averting his gaze from his insides, ending with him consuming them, enjoying the slide of his flesh against his gut. At what point, he wonders, did he begin to revel in this? The disgusting feasting of his own soul?

 

He wiggles invisible fingers and toes. Kaneki is invisible. Whenever he eats himself, however, he can look down and see the blood and ruined meat pooling in his stomach, slipping into his intestines, slipping down as excretion on the cracked wood of his throne. Bone breaks under enamel when he chews and narrow eyes watch him greedily. They show hunger for his sufferings, obsession over his cries and tears, craving for his madness.

 

Madness he can give—madness, Kaneki finds, is all that he has.

 

You’ve lost your mind. Uta’s voice lilts pleasantly; it has always been very nice to hear—nicer than Hide’s dead rasp and the screams of his own diminishing sanity. It’s wonderful, sighs Uta, as he drags black nails through Kaneki’s hair, into his eyes. I’ve always liked the crazy ones, he continues, fingers like claws as he slowly and reverently pulls Kaneki’s left eye out of its socket. Kaneki does not protest, and merely watches with his remaining eye in a hazy delirium.

 

He stares back at himself through the disconnected eye. The Peacemaker tilts his head childishly, wearing an impish grin. He squeezes the eyeball so tightly that Kaneki can feel the pinch inside his head, scrambling his brains with a pleasant flip, cutting the last bothersome strands of weakness. Uta smiles down at him, covers him with a cape made of roses and thorns. He then lifts the crushed eye to his mouth and chomps down, chewing noisily. Half of his vision is thrown into darkness.

 

Kaneki smiles and breaks half of all his bones. When he is finished, he tears off the one wing of a lost, confused bird.

 

#

 

You should not leave, begs Touka, nothing but a mess with her uncombed and stringy hair, her bloodshot eyes and thin pencil lead jutting out from her fingers. They break off every time she moves, unwanted parts of her that fall to the ground as bits and pieces.

 

But I cannot stay, replies Kaneki, helping her keep her hands still so that the lead does not splinter in her skin. Even as he steps away from her, rusty nails bear down on his top two vertebrae. They remain motionless until after the sun has gone down, and the city is awash with garish light shows and thick curling smoke.

 

Then they pierce deep into his spine, through his severed nerves. He shudders, but he does not utter a sound.

 

#

 

He is alone as he walks down empty hallways, footsteps echoing softly. If he concentrates and listens hard enough, it almost sounds like there are hundreds of other feet that are trampling the ground beside him. When he turns his head to look at the trail of blood he’s made, he sees skittish marks and scrapes where bony, warped feet have set foot onto the cold ground. If he lowers his gaze a bit more, a centipede looks to be attached to his back, squirming where it meets his skin.

 

Kill, it says in a curious tone. Me, myself, I?

 

Me, Kaneki agrees, and continues to walk, dragging the beast along with him. It moves in sync to his thoughts, as if it is a part of himself. The further down the endless hall he gets, however, clocks fade in from the empty walls, like the whites of dead eyes. He glances at one of them, watches the deep purple hands go around in circles while dripping blood. When he passes it, however, it abruptly jerks to a stop. Each time he takes a step, it goes back one hour, goes back so far that Kaneki is no longer anywhere near it, and it disappears into the distance.

 

It happens the same way with another clock with a shiny bronze finish. The hands of this clock are branches from a sakura tree, shedding blossoms and petals with every shift of the minute. He reaches out to touch it; the branches mimic his movements and stop to reach out for him.

 

Kill, repeats the centipede, wagging its tail. Me, myself, I?

 

Myself, Kaneki agrees, and pulls his ebony fingers away. When he turns his back, the sound of cracking wood demands his attention. He ignores it, however, and moves on, still hearing the hoarse whisper of a hundred footsteps falling onto the ground all at once. Eventually the sound crescendos to a roar, and he cannot distinguish his own footstep from the chaos that trails after him. He finds that he does not mind, feeling as though the heavy madness that descends upon him like this is rather fitting, rather cruel, rather tragic.

 

The smell of coffee makes him recoil, though, when he approaches a table with only two chairs. Exactly two cups of black coffee sit on the smooth surface, still steaming. The white tendrils reach up into the air desperately, and Kaneki lets one of them curl around his finger. It twines evanescent fingers into his, like he is holding hands with a ghost of someone, maybe himself. He takes his other hand and uses it to bring one cup up to his lips, sipping at it hesitantly. It burns his tongue, and he curls the muscle inside of his mouth, pressing it flat against the back of his teeth.

 

Across from him, the cup rises into the air as well, tilting so that its scalding contents pour onto the table with a loud hiss. It takes a moment for him to realize that there is in fact only one cup of coffee and one chair, that he is looking into a mirror that does not show his reflection. He tries to touch the mirror with one hand, shocked to find that it instead draws him in, sucking him out of his body so that he is trapped on the other side.

 

Kill, he watches the centipede wriggle its many legs. Me, myself, I?

 

I, his empty reflection agrees, a mere shell without a soul. And then it turns around so that Kaneki is peering at his own scarred back, the disgusting merge of his body and another that is made of blood. His body walks away, slowly. When Kaneki presses his hand against the mirror, however, he does not go through. He sits down in the chair and wraps his fingers around the half-empty mug of coffee. This time, when he tilts his head back to drink the poison, it passes right through him, as if his existence has left him and he is nothing but thoughts swirling around in air.

 

#

 

Something sharp slides into his eyes, something painful and something like the bitter dregs of memories he doesn’t wish to keep.  He grabs at it with his fingers. His hands? His rage and desperation? Maybe his emotions have manifested outside of his body like crimson limbs, swaying angrily at the sight of a white angel in front of him. The angel brings him to his knees, looking almost convincingly sad. Kaneki laughs at the sight, curses the demon in the guise of a heavenly being, and keels over onto his side. His shadow detaches itself from his prone, vulnerable body, looking down at him.

 

You’ve done enough, says the shadow, and he wants to shake his head, say no, beg for yet another chance.

 

You fought for me, says the shadow, unwavering, and he wishes that it would shut up, that he find peace in his own mind. But peace, he remembers, is something that has avoided him for a long, long time.

 

We should rest a bit, says the shadow, reaching out a delicate, pitch black hand. It curves against Kaneki’s bloody, moist cheek, the touch of a loving mother.

 

I’ll sleep for a while, he croaks, and the shadow nods, moves its palm over the gaping holes where his eyes should be. Kaneki falls into a restless dream, head filled with disturbing, insane noises. He crumbles inside of his mind, picks at the fallen rubble of his fortress, and breaks his bones again.

 

He wakes.

 

#

 

 


End file.
